Friday, June 27, 2008

"Israel is even today pushing Bush into a pre-emptive war with anaked threat to attack Iran itself should Bush refuse the cup..."

Brigade -- Pat hammers it home with this one! Feel free toforward it to all on your lists.

For the Cause, Linda

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Who's Planning Our Next War?By Patrick BuchananFriday, June 27, 2008

Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in2002, President Bush has often said, "The United States will notpermit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with theworld's most destructive weapons."

He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, thoughthere is no hard evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program?

William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a U.S. attack onIran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win.Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free.

Yet, to start a third war in the Middle East against a nation threetimes as large as Iraq, and leave it to a new president to fight,would be a daylight hijacking of the congressional war power and acriminally irresponsible act. For Congress alone has the power toauthorize war.

Yet Israel is even today pushing Bush into a pre-emptive war with anaked threat to attack Iran itself should Bush refuse the cup.

In April, Israel held a five-day civil defense drill. In June,Israel sent 100 F-15s and F-16s, with refueling tankers andhelicopters to pick up downed pilots, toward Greece in a simulatedattack, a dress rehearsal for war. The planes flew 1,400kilometers, the distance to Iran's uranium enrichment facility atNatanz.

Ehud Olmert came home from a June meeting with Bush to tellIsraelis: "We reached agreement on the need to take care of theIranian threat. ... I left with a lot less question marks regardingthe means, the timetable restrictions and American resoluteness. ...

"George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and theneed to vanquish it, and intends to act on the matter before theend of his term. ... The Iranian problem requires urgent attention,and I see no reason to delay this just because there will be a newpresident in the White House seven and a half months from now."

If Bush is discussing war on Iran with Ehud Olmert, why is he notdiscussing it with Congress or the nation?

Previous air strikes on the PLO command in Tunis, on the Osirakreactor in Iraq and on the presumed nuclear reactor site in Syrialast September give Israel a high degree of credibility.

Still, attacking Iran would be no piece of cake.

Israel lacks the stealth and cruise-missile capacity to degradeIran's air defenses systematically and no longer has the element ofsurprise. Israeli planes and pilots would likely be lost.

Israel also lacks the ability to stay over the target or conductfollow-up strikes. The U.S. Air Force bombed Iraq for five weekswith hundreds of daily runs in 1991 before Gen. Schwarzkopf moved.

Moreover, if Iran has achieved the capacity to enrich uranium, shehas surely moved centrifuges to parts of the country that Israelcannot reach -- and can probably replicate anything lost.

Israel would also have to over-fly Turkey, or Syria andU.S.-occupied Iraq, or Saudi Arabia to reach Natanz. Turks, Syriansand Saudis would deny Israel permission and might resist. For theU.S. military to let Israel over-fly Iraq would make us anaccomplice. How would that sit with the Europeans who aresupporting our sanctions on Iran and want the nuclear issue settleddiplomatically?

And who can predict with certitude how Iran would respond?

Would Iran attack Israel with rockets, inviting retaliation withJericho and cruise missiles from Israeli submarines? Would sheclose the Gulf with suicide-boat attacks on tankers and U.S.warships?

With oil at $135 a barrel, Israeli air strikes on Iran would seemto ensure a 2,000-point drop in the Dow and a world recession.

What would Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria do? All three are now inindirect negotiations with Israel. U.S. forces in Afghanistan andIraq could be made by Iran to pay a high price in blood that couldforce the United States to initiate its own air war in retaliation,and to finish a war Israel had begun. But a U.S. war on Iran is nota decision Bush can outsource to Ehud Olmert.

Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullins left forIsrael. CBS News cited U.S. officials as conceding the trip comes"just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get theBush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex."

Vice President Cheney is said to favor U.S. strikes. Secretary ofDefense Robert Gates and Mullins are said to be opposed.

Moving through Congress, powered by the Israeli lobby, is HouseResolution 362, which demands that President Bush impose a U.S.blockade of Iran, an act of war.

Is it not time the American people were consulted on the next warthat is being planned for us?

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Diplomatic relations between Colombia and Nicaragua are once again in the news, with the two countries trading broadsides over the Nicaraguan government’s recent decision to grant asylum to three female members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in June said that the FARC members in question reportedly survived the March 1 attack on a FARC camp just over the Colombian border in Ecuador that resulted in the death of Raul Reyes (Luis Edgar Devia Silva), FARC’s No. 2 and one of its most long-standing and experienced operational commanders. After the March 1 raid, Nicaragua briefly severed diplomatic relations with Colombia in protest of the country’s violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty.

Ortega accused the Colombian government of conducting “state-sponsored terrorism” against the FARC members in his explanation of why he granted them asylum. To emphasize this point, Ortega further accused the Colombian government of plotting to assassinate the three FARC members in Nicaragua. He then stressed that the three need Nicaraguan protection so they can serve as witnesses in a future trial of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez for “crimes against humanity.”

Nicaragua’s granting of asylum and Ortega’s rhetoric have outraged the Colombian government, which had formally requested extradition of the three FARC members. Colombia has said it finds it inconceivable that the Nicaraguan government should make heroines out of people who had been residing in the camp of a recognized “terrorist” organization — a group that has killed thousands of Colombian citizens, kidnapped more than 700 people and constantly attempted to overthrow the Colombian government. The Colombians have also said that it is unacceptable, offensive and irresponsible for the Nicaraguan president to accuse Uribe of committing crimes against humanity.

Ortega’s granting of asylum to the FARC members is consistent with the way the Sandinistas granted shelter, and even citizenship, to hundreds of Marxist militants when the Sandinistas ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990. Similarly, Nicaragua’s growing relationship with Iran is very similar to the relationships it enjoyed with U.S. foes such as Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during the first Sandinista reign.

Nicaragua’s status as a sanctuary (and even an operational base) for these militants nearly resulted in terrible consequences for Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1993, when a group of jihadist militants attacked the World Trade Center in New York and one of the militants was found to have Nicaraguan identification documents in his jacket pocket.Friend of Pariahs and a Marxist Sanctuary

There has always been a tight relationship between the Marxist FSLN and its ideological brethren and patrons in places like Cuba and the Soviet Union. This relationship manifested not only in terms of military training and equipment, but also in terms of foreign aid such as food, health care and education. This aid was made doubly important by the trade embargo placed on Nicaragua by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1985. In addition to receiving aid, the FSLN also assisted the Cubans and Soviets in providing aid to like-minded revolutionary groups in the region, such as the Salvadoran Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), FARC and others.

As the Soviet Union suffered economically in the late 1980s and eventually collapsed in early 1990, the amount of aid Soviets could provide to their Marxist friends and proxies declined dramatically. This drop in aid significantly affected Cuba’s economy. As a consequence, Cuba lost much of its ability to assist partners in the hemisphere such as the FSLN. This caused the Sandinistas to seek new sources of funding, and they found some help from the pariah nations of Libya and Iraq. In fact, at the end of the first Sandinista reign in 1990, the Libyan Embassy in Managua was several times larger than the U.S. Embassy there. The Libyans were situated in a large and imposing building, while the U.S. Embassy was literally housed in trailers — a temporary setup established after the 1972 Managua earthquake destroyed the former embassy.

The Libyans did have a presence at the United Nations in New York, but since those personnel were so closely scrutinized by U.S. authorities, they decided to use their embassy in Managua as the base for the vast majority of their intelligence operations in the Western Hemisphere.

However, the fall of the Soviet Union affected more than just economics. As the political landscape shifted in the late 1980s, places that had served as havens and training bases for Marxist militants, such as South Yemen and East Germany, became less welcoming. In 1990, both of those countries ceased to exist. This left a lot of fugitive Marxist militants looking for a place to go, and many of them relocated to Managua. What resulted was an influx of Marxist militants from European groups such as the Irish Republican Army, ETA and the Red Brigades, as well as Middle Eastern militants, such as representatives of the various Palestinian Marxist-oriented groups.

Some of the fugitives who moved to Managua were educated, skilled and surprisingly entrepreneurial. A couple from the Italian Red Brigades opened a popular Italian restaurant in downtown Managua, and members of the Basque group ETA opened an automobile repair garage in Managua’s Santa Rosa neighborhood.Operational Base

Managua was not only a place of refuge, but also a base for operations. The automobile repair shop run by the ETA members made headlines on May 23, 1993, when a powerful explosion ripped through an arms and document cache stored in a sophisticated vault hidden under the shop. The explosion, which resulted in the deaths of two men, emphasized how unwise it is to store mortar rounds with their fuses installed (especially if those rounds get knocked over). It also provided an unprecedented glimpse into the activities of the international Marxist networks that called Managua home in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

While much attention was paid to the arms found in the cache (which included 19 surface-to-air missiles and a number of other weapons), it was a stack of surviving documents that shed the most light on the group’s activities. The stack included a large number of identification documents (more than 300 passports) as well as a number of targeting dossiers that had been assembled — and several actually used — to kidnap a number of industrialists in other Latin American countries, such as Mexico and Brazil. The cache was owned by the Popular Liberation Forces (PLF) faction of FMLN, which had to admit ownership after identification documents bearing the photographs of several PLF leaders were uncovered in the cache.

A U.S. team scanned the thousands of pages of documents, then loaded them in digital form onto a searchable database contained on a set of CDs. The documents revealed that as financial aid from the Soviet Union and Cuba began to diminish, the FMLN sought new ways to fund its revolution. One PLF group decided to use its foreign allies to kidnap wealthy industrialists in Latin America and hold them for ransom. The kidnapping scheme was truly an international endeavor, with the muscle for the operation being provided by experienced Chilean and Argentine Marxists and the cover provided by young Canadians. The Canadians, David Spencer and Christine Lamont, were members of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) who moved to Managua to help the FMLN and became involved with the PLF. The Canadians rented the safe-houses and cars used in the abductions, and they also conducted much of the pre-operational surveillance for the kidnappings. One way they ac complished the surveillance was by posing as graduate students and conducting ruse interviews of the victims as a way to assess their personal security arrangements. The industrialists seemed especially vulnerable to the wiles of Lamont, a beautiful young redhead.

The wheels fell off the kidnapping scheme in 1989, when Brazilian police stormed a safe-house the group was using to hold Brazilian supermarket mogul Abilio dos Santos Diniz. The police arrested five Chileans, two Argentines and a Brazilian, along with Spencer and Lamont, in connection with the crime. In addition to the targeting dossier on Diniz and newspaper accounts of the kidnapping and police raid, the Managua cache also contained a number of personal documents belonging to Spencer and Lamont — including Lamont’s Canadian passport, which had been oddly altered by attaching the photo of a middle-aged FMLN leader to the young woman’s identity document. The FMLN had managed to deny any connection to the case until the 1993 mishap at the arms cache made further denial impossible.

The U.S. investigation into the case uncovered that members of the Sandinista government, including the powerful Sandinista politician Tomas Borge, had known of and even sanctioned the group’s unorthodox fundraising activities. Borge also knew about the secret FMLN arms cache that exploded. According to credible eyewitness reports, Borge was among the first to respond to the scene of the blast — in his bathrobe.Blowback

Ortega and the Sandinistas lost the presidential election in 1990 to Violeta Chamorro and the National Opposition Union. In the two months between the election and the inauguration of Chamorro, the Sandinistas held a sort of “going out of business” sale on Nicaraguan citizenship. During that time, the Sandinistas granted citizenship (and passports) to 890 foreigners from more than 30 countries. The list of naturalized people contained not only Marxists from Spain, Italy, Germany, Argentina and Chile, but also Palestinians, Iraqis, Algerians, Lebanese and Libyans. Although the Sandinistas would maintain tight control over Nicaragua’s military, police and interior ministry even after the inauguration, they would no longer control the entire executive branch. By granting citizenship to their friends, they hoped to protect them from extradition or deportation.

This policy was nearly disastrous for the Sandinistas. In March 1993, shortly after the bombing of the World Trade Center, U.S. federal agents executed a search warrant at the address listed on the driver’s license of Mohammed Salameh, the Palestinian jihadist who rented the van used in the bombing. Living at the address was Ibrahim Elgabrowny, an Egyptian who attempted to assault one of the agents executing the search warrant. Upon arresting him, the agents found a packet of Nicaraguan identity documents in Elgabrowny’s jacket pocket.

The documents — birth certificates, passports, cedulas (national identity cards) and driver’s licenses — had been issued under innocuous names but bore the photos of Elgabrowny’s cousin, El Sayyid Nosair, his wife Karen and their three children. At the time of this discovery, Nosair was serving time in Attica Prison for a conviction related to the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and Elgabrowny and his colleagues were planning an operation to free Nosair from prison.

Initially, there was strong suspicion that the Sandinista government had knowingly assisted the militants in issuing the documents — especially in light of their 1990 last-minute citizenship-granting spree. However, an exhaustive U.S. government investigation determined that the documents found in Elgabrowny’s possession had been issued in a very different manner from those the Sandinistas knowingly issued to militants. Some U.S. politicians had hoped the Nicaraguan documents would provide them with a smoking gun they could use to go after the Sandinistas with both barrels, and they were very disappointed by the results of the investigation. In fact, one powerful senator’s staff attempted to pressure the lead investigator in the case to change the findings of his investigation to show Sandinista complicity in the bombing in New York. Unfortunately for these politicians, the case was not an elaborate Sandinista plot to strike the United States. It was just plain old fraud, something that occurs with great frequency in Latin America as in other regions.

However, this case could provide a relevant warning for the Sandinistas today in the post-9/11 world. In 1993, the U.S. response to Sandinista complicity in an attack against the United States would likely have consisted of a renewal of the trade boycott and a ton of international pressure intended to drive them out of their posts in the Nicaraguan military, intelligence and police. But the world is a different place in 2008. The blowback on the Sandinistas could prove to be very severe if militants taking refuge in Nicaragua (or based out of a diplomatic mission in Managua) are implicated in a terrorist attack — especially an attack against the United States.

Talk of war with Iran and unmistakable perception management campaigns to prepare for such a war are rising in Washington, DC.

Although it is being reported that the U.S. State Department may soon open an Interests Sections in Tehran, staffed by U.S. diplomatic personnel -- Iran maintains such a section at the Pakistani embassy in Washington -- the other Bush administration chain of command, the one operating out of Vice President Dick Cheney's office, appears intent on war with Iran.

John McCain's chief strategist, Charlie Black, told Fortune magazine that another terrorist attack on the United States prior to the November election would benefit the McCain campaign. He cited the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as helping McCain in the New Hampshire primary. McCain, who is backed by the some of the same neocon elements that pushed the US into war with Iraq, denounced Black's comments but McCain also proffered the menace of another 9/11-type attack in stating: "Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences."

GOP neocon and former unconfirmed US ambassador to the UN John Bolton recently said that an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites at Natanz and Isfahan was likely soon.

WMR has learned that the intelligence and defense firm SAIC completed a security survey of the Houston Ship Channel from Galveston to Houston two weeks ago and found the situation a "disaster waiting to happen." The report cited the coordination between multiple jurisdictions.

WMR has also learned that the FBI has upgraded its initial investigation of the Houston Police Department shooting of former CIA Houston station chief Roland "Tony" Carnaby on April 29 from a possible "civil rights violation" to a "national security investigation." As WMR previously reported, Carnaby was contracted to the CIA and specifically assigned to liaise with other federal law enforcement agencies and the Port of Houston and area airports on security for the port and airports. Yesterday, the Houston Police Department continued its evasive tactics when it was discovered they omitted from an evidence preservation list Carnaby's CIA credentials and his cell phone communications subsequent to his first stop by the police and his shooting.

Super liquified natural gas (LNG) tankers like the Al Gharrafa (above) are now pulling into Texas ports. The above report incorrectly states the Al Gharrafa is the first Q-Flex tanker to visit an American port. It is the second Arab-flagged tanker to pull into a Texas port. Security officials worry that another 9/11 will involve the blowing up of one of these ships, with disastrous consequences. Below are two Coast Guard boats keeping other vessels away from the Al Gharrafa.

House Resolution 362, introduced by Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Mike Pence (R-IN), calls for the United States to "initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program." This sense of the Congress resolution, complemented by Senate Resolution 580, introduced by Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN) and John Thune (R-SD), would impose a naval, land, and air blockade against Iran and be tantamount to an act of war. The resolution is the brainchild of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which decided on the course of action two weeks ago during its annual meeting in Washington, DC.

Yesterday, Rostam Pouraz of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), accused Saudi Arabia of secretly working behind the scenes with the AIPAC and war hawks community in Washington to push for a war against Iran. Saudi Arabia fears the growing influence of Iran among Shias in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia's restless Eastern Province. The de facto Saudi-Israel alliance of opportunity and their collusion on lobbying the Bush administration for an attack on Iran is played down by AIPAC and the Saudis as non-existent.

WMR has also learned that the so-called Syrian Al Kibar "nuclear weapons facility," said to be manned by Syrian, North Korean, and Iranian technicians and attacked by the Israeli Air Force last September, was a decoy attack to mask Israel's probing of Syria's Russian-supplied radar system. The Israelis successfully penetrated the Russian radar system during its attack on Al Kibar. However, Russia is installing an upgraded radar system in Iran to protect Iranian nuclear sites. It is expected the upgrade to the Tin Shield (NATO code name) mobile Russian radar in Iran will foil the stealth capabilities of Israeli attack aircraft and missiles and, therefore, some experts see an Israeli attack on Iran before such an advanced radar system becomes fully operational.

It is also being reported that Meir Dagan, the head of Israel's Mossad, has had his term extended by a year to 2009 by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The extension of Dagan's term is to ensure continuity in Mossad in the event of an Israeli strike on Iran.

These developments follow a simulated Israeli Air Force strike on Iran using 100 F-15s and F-16s flying over the Eastern Mediterranean and Greece in an exercise conducted earlier this month.

JM (Pine Ridge) Wayne, 2 months on and the FBI is finally categorizing Carnaby's death a "national security investigation" seems like quite a long delay. How come it is taking so long for these guys to make a case out of his death? Either you are really nimble in getting the relevant details of a case or the FBI is still entrenched in layers of bureaucracy that make it impossible for them to anticipate any movements of real enemies of the Empire. I guess no lessons were learned from the poor communication in the FBI and CIA that led to the incredible gaps of intelligence that allowed 9/11 to happen so easily.

And, how anyone can believe that such an attack helps McCain is full of shit. This would be another one on Bush's watch! McCain believes in Bush, Bush has been allowed every inconceivable, illegitimate policy to forward his paramilitary arsenal, and these fuckers can still lead us into the gutter with their rhetoric and ineffective policies. Whoa, watch out USA! If we let these jackasses get away with it again, and our blindly loyal military follows the Jackass-In-Chief, aka The Decider, then the USA deserves to be fucked!

Maybe then we'd learn we've been bamboozled. But I doubt it. Americans don't seem to be the same people that took down Hitler and the Axis.

But to those fortunate companies that made a killing (off our brothers and sisters that lost their lives or humanity), they seemed to make it worth it. Why don't they go fight in the war. Or better yet, let's just put Bush and Ahmidinijad in a steel cage match. Let them fight their own fucking wars.

And I'm pissed off that george carlin is dead of a heart attack but Cheney is still alive to plan more god damned wars! FUCK YOU, CHENEY!!! Maybe fate has something even worse in store for your evil ass!

Styve (Portland, OR) What hold time should we observe before disseminating this? Thanks Wayne!!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

On June 20, The New York Times published a report saying that more than 100 Israeli aircraft carried out an exercise in early June over the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Greece. The article pointed out that the distances covered were roughly the distances from Israel to Iranian nuclear sites and that the exercise was a trial run for a large-scale air strike against Iran. On June 21, the British newspaper The Times quoted Israeli military sources as saying that the exercise was a dress rehearsal for an attack on Iran. The Jerusalem Post, in covering these events, pointedly referred to an article it had published in May saying that Israeli intelligence had changed its forecast for Iran passing a nuclear threshold — whether this was simply the ability to cause an explosion under controlled conditions or the ability to produce an actual weapon was unclear — to 2008 rather than 2009.

The New York Times article, positioned on the front page, captured the attention of everyone from oil traders to Iran, which claimed that this was entirely psychological warfare on the part of the Israelis and that Israel could not carry out such an attack. It was not clear why the Iranians thought an attack was impossible, but they were surely right in saying that the exercise was psychological warfare. The Israelis did everything they could to publicize the exercise, and American officials, who obviously knew about the exercise but had not publicized it, backed them up. What is important to note is that the fact that this was psychological warfare — and fairly effective, given the Iranian response — does not mean that Israel is not going to attack. One has nothing to do with the other. So the question of whether there is going to be an attack must be analyzed carefully.

The first issue, of course, is what might be called the “red line.” It has always been expected that once the Iranians came close to a line at which they would become a capable nuclear power, the Americans or the Israelis would act to stop them, neither being prepared to tolerate a nuclear Iran. What has never been clear is what constitutes that red line. It could simply be having produced sufficient fissionable material to build a bomb, having achieved a nuclear explosion under test conditions in Iran or having approached the point of producing a deliverable nuclear weapon.

Early this month, reports circulated that A.Q. Khan, the former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program who is accused of selling nuclear technology to such countries as Libya, North Korea and Iran, had also possessed detailed design specifications and blueprints for constructing a nuclear weapon small enough to be mounted on missiles available to North Korea and Iran. The blueprints were found on a computer owned by a Swiss businessman, but the reports pointedly said that it was not known whether these documents had been transferred to Iran or any other country. It was interesting that the existence of the blueprints in Switzerland was known to the United States — and, we assume, Israel — in 2006 but that, at this point, there was no claim that they had been transferred.

Clearly, the existence of these documents — if Iran had a copy of them — would have helped the Iranians clear some hurdles. However, as we have pointed out, there is a huge gap between having enriched uranium and having a deliverable weapon, the creation of which requires technologies totally unrelated to each other. Ruggedizing and miniaturizing a nuclear device requires specializations from materials science to advanced electronics. Therefore, having enriched uranium or even triggering an underground nuclear device still leaves you a long way from having a weapon.

That’s why the leak on the nuclear blueprints is so important. From the Israeli and American point of view, those blueprints give the Iranians the knowledge of precisely how to ruggedize and miniaturize a nuclear device. But there are two problems here. First, if we were given blueprints for building a bridge, they would bring us no closer to building one. We would need experts in multiple disciplines just to understand the blueprints and thousands of trained engineers and workers to actually build the bridge. Second, the Israelis and Americans have known about the blueprints for two years. Even if they were certain that they had gotten to the Iranians — which the Israelis or Americans would certainly have announced in order to show the increased pressure at least one of them would be under to justify an attack — it is unclear how much help the blueprints would have been to the Iranians. The Jerusalem Post story implied that the Iranians were supposed to be c rossing an undefined line in 2009. It is hard to imagine that they were speeded up to 2008 by a document delivered in 2006, and that the Israelis only just noticed.

In the end, the Israelis may have intelligence indicating that the blueprints did speed things up, and that the Iranians might acquire nuclear weapons in 2008. We doubt that. But given the statements Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made over the years, the Israelis have to be planning based on worst-case scenarios. What the sum total of their leaks adds up to is an attempt to communicate widely that there is an increased urgency in dealing with Iran, based on intelligence that the Iranian program is farther along than previously thought.

The problem is the fact that the Israelis are communicating. In fact, they are going out of their way to communicate. That is extremely odd. If the Israelis were intending to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, they would want to be absolutely certain that as much of the equipment in the facilities was destroyed as possible. But the hard truth is that the heart of Iran’s capability, such as it is, does not reside in its facilities but in its scientists, engineers and technicians who collectively constitute the knowledge base of Iran’s nuclear program. Facilities can be replaced. It would take at least a generation to replace what we already regard as an insufficient cadre of expertise.

Therefore, if Israel wanted not simply to take out current facilities but to take Iran out of the nuclear game for a very long time, killing these people would have to be a major strategic goal. The Israelis would want to strike in the middle of the workday, without any warning whatever. If they strike Iran, they will be condemned widely for their actions. The additional criticism that would come from killing the workforce would not be a large price to pay for really destroying the Iranian capabilities. Unlike the Iraqi reactor strike in 1981, when the Israelis struck at night to minimize casualties, this strike against a more sophisticated program could not afford to be squeamish.

There are obviously parts of Iran’s nuclear capability that cannot be moved. There is other equipment that can be, with enough warning and with more or less difficulty, moved to unknown locations. But nothing would be easier to disperse than the heart of the program — the people. They could be moved out of harm’s way with only an hour’s notice. Therefore, providing warning that an attack was coming makes very little sense. It runs counter to basic principles of warfare. The Israelis struck the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 with not the slightest hint of the attack’s imminence. That was one of the reasons it was successful. Telegraphing your punch is not very smart in these circumstances.

The Israelis have done more than raise the possibility that an attack might be launched in 2008. They have publicized how they plan to do it. Based on the number and type of aircraft involved in the exercise — more than 100 F-15 and F-16 fighter jets — one Israeli attack scenario could involve a third of Israel’s inventory of fourth-generation strike aircraft, including most of its latest-model F-15I Ra’am and F-16I Sufa fighter bombers. If Greece were the target in this exercise, then the equivalent distance would mean that the Israelis are planning to cross Jordanian airspace, transit through Iraq and strike Iran from that direction. A strike through Turkey — and there is no indication that the Turks would permit it — would take much longer.

The most complex part of the operation’s logistics would be the refueling of aircraft. They would have to be orbiting in Iraqi airspace. One of the points discussed about the Mediterranean exercise was the role of Israeli helicopters in rescuing downed flyers. Rescue helicopters would be involved, but we doubt very much they would be entering Iranian airspace from Israel. They are a lot slower than the jets, and they would have to be moving hours ahead of time. The Iranians might not spot them but the Russians would, and there is no guarantee that they wouldn’t pass it on to the Iranians. That means that the Israeli helicopters would have to move quietly into Iraq and be based there.

And that means that this would have to be a joint American-Israeli operation. The United States controls Iraqi airspace, meaning that the Americans would have to permit Israeli tankers to orbit in Iraqi airspace. The search-and-rescue helicopters would have to be based there. And we strongly suspect that rescued pilots would not be ferried back to Israel by helicopter but would either be sent to U.S. hospitals in Iraq or transferred to Israeli aircraft in Iraq.

The point here is that, given the exercise the Israelis carried out and the distances involved, there is no way Israel could do this without the direct cooperation of the United States. From a political standpoint in the region, it is actually easier for the United States to take out Iran’s facilities than for it to help the Israelis do so. There are many Sunni states that might formally protest but be quite pleased to see the United States do the job. But if the Israelis were to do it, Sunni states would have to be much more serious in their protestations. In having the United States play the role of handmaiden in the Israeli operation, it would appear that the basic charge against the United States — that it is the handmaiden of the Israelis — is quite true. If the Americans are going to be involved in a strike against Iran’s nuclear program, they are far better off doing it themselves than playing a supporting role to Israel.

There is something not quite right in this whole story. The sudden urgency — replete with tales of complete blueprints that might be in Iranian hands — doesn’t make sense. We may be wrong, but we have no indication that Iran is that close to producing nuclear weapons. Second, the extreme publicity given the exercise in the Mediterranean, coming from both Israel and the United States, runs counter to the logic of the mission. Third, an attack on Iran through Iraqi airspace would create a political nightmare for the United States. If this is the Israeli attack plan, the Americans would appear to be far better off doing it themselves.

There are a number of possible explanations. On the question of urgency, the Israelis might have two things in mind. One is the rumored transfer of S-300 surface-to-air missiles from Russia to Iran. This transfer has been rumored for quite a while, but by all accounts has yet to happen. The S-300 is a very capable system, depending on the variety (and it is unclear which variety is being transferred), and it would increase the cost and complexity of any airstrike against Iran. Israel may have heard that the Russians are planning to begin transferring the missiles sometime in 2008.

Second, there is obviously the U.S. presidential election. George W. Bush will be out of office in early 2009, and it is possible that Barack Obama will be replacing him. The Israelis have made no secret of their discomfort with an Obama presidency. Obviously, Israel cannot attack Iran without U.S. cooperation. The Israelis’ timetable may be moved up because they are not certain that Obama will permit an attack later on.

There are also explanations for the extreme publicity surrounding the exercise. The first might be that the Israelis have absolutely no intention of trying to stage long-range attacks but are planning some other type of attack altogether. The possibilities range from commando raids to cruise missiles fired from Israeli submarines in the Arabian Sea — or something else entirely. The Mediterranean exercise might have been designed to divert attention.

Alternatively, the Israelis could be engaged in exhausting Iranian defenders. During the first Gulf War, U.S. aircraft rushed toward the Iraqi border night after night for weeks, pulling away and landing each time. The purpose was to get the Iraqis to see these feints as routine and slow down their reactions when U.S. aircraft finally attacked. The Israelis could be engaged in a version of this, tiring out the Iranians with a series of “emergencies” so they are less responsive in the event of a real strike.

Finally, the Israelis and Americans might not be intending an attack at all. Rather, they are — as the Iranians have said — engaged in psychological warfare for political reasons. The Iranians appear to be split now between those who think that Ahmadinejad has led Iran into an extremely dangerous situation and those who think Ahmadinejad has done a fine job. The prospect of an imminent and massive attack on Iran could give his opponents ammunition against him. This would explain the Iranian government response to the reports of a possible attack — which was that such an attack was just psychological warfare and could not happen. That clearly was directed more for internal consumption than it was for the Israelis or Americans.

We tend toward this latter theory. Frankly, the Bush administration has been talking about an attack on Iran for years. It is hard for us to see that the situation has changed materially over the past months. But if it has, then either Israel or the United States would have attacked — and not with front-page spreads in The New York Times before the attack was launched. In the end, we tend toward the view that this is psychological warfare for the simple reason that you don’t launch a surprise attack of the kind necessary to take out Iran’s nuclear program with a media blitz beforehand. It just doesn’t work that way.

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By JOHN SPIRISpecial to The Japan TimesIn a September 2003 article for The Guardian newspaper, Michael Meacher, who served as Tony Blair's environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003, shocked the establishment by calling the global war on terrorism "bogus." Even more controversially, he implied that the U.S. government either allowed 9/11 to happen, or played some role in the destruction wrought that day. Besides Meacher, few politicians have publicly questioned America's official 9/11 narrative  until Diet member Yukihisa Fujita.Yukihisa Fujita addresses the DietSpeaking out: Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Yukihisa Fujita addresses the Diet and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on his doubts about the official story of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. COURTESY OF YUKIHISA FUJITA

In January 2008 Fujita, a member of the Democratic Party of Japan, asked the Japanese Parliament and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to explain gaping holes in the official 9/11 story that various groups  including those who call themselves the "911 Truth Movement"  claim to have exposed.Fujita, along with a growing number of individuals  including European and American politicians  are leading a charge to conduct a thorough, independent investigation of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001."Three or four years ago I saw some Internet videos like 'Loose Change' and '911 In Plane Site' and I began to ask questions," Fujita said in an interview, "but I still couldn't believe this was done by anyone but al-Qaida."Last year I watched more videos and read books written by professor David Ray Griffin (a professor emeritus of philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont Graduate University who wrote the most famous Truth Movement book, 'The New Pearl Harbor') about things such as the collapse of World Trade Center No. 7. This building, which was never hit by an airplane, collapsed straight down. Between the videos showing the way it fell, and the numerous reports of explosions, many are convinced that this building was demolished."Fujita's presentation to the Diet and Fukuda focused a great deal on yet another aspect of 9/11 that now quite a few around the world find extremely suspicious: the Pentagon crash."I don't think (a) 767 could have hit the Pentagon," Fujita reckons. "There is no evidence of the plane itself. Almost nothing identifiable was left on the lawn or inside. The official story says the entire plane disintegrated, but the jet engines in particular were very strong (two 6-ton titanium steel turbine engines). And the damage to the building is much smaller than the size of the supposed airplane. The official claims just don't fit the facts."While some label that claim "wacky" and label critics of the official 9/11 story "conspiracy theorists," Fujita has impressive company. For one, former Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine, who was commanding general of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security until 1984, is quoted on the "Patriots Question 911" Web site as saying, "I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, 'The plane does not fit in that hole.'"So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What's going on?"Fujita urges the Bush administration to put the issue to rest simply by showing videos that show the plane that hit the Pentagon. Instead, only a few grainy images have been released to the public. More disconcertingly, many videos taken by surrounding businesses were confiscated by the FBI immediately after the Pentagon explosion.The Pennsylvania crash, like the Pentagon explosion, also yielded virtually no recognizable plane parts at the crash site. Rather, small pieces of debris were found up to 10 km away. The official story  that the plane "vaporized" when it hit the ground  is inconsistent with the evidence left by every other plane crash in the history of aviation.Plane crashes always yield plane fragments, Fujita explained, which can be identified by the plane's serial number, but that's not the case for the four planes which crashed on 9/11. Strangely, the U.S. government managed to produce passports and DNA samples of individuals killed, but no identifiable plane parts. In an online article entitled "Physics 911," 34-year U.S. Air Force veteran Col. George Nelson notes, "It seems . . . that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from public view."Fujita has largely relied on the voluminous amount of video and written material published in books and on the Internet, including the "Patriots Question 911" site, on which hundreds of allegations are leveled against the official story by senior officials from the military, intelligence services, law enforcement, and government, as well as pilots, engineers, architects, firefighters and others.While not many other Japanese have taken an interest in this story, a few notable individuals besides Fujita have disputed the U.S. government's version, including Akira Dojimaru, a Japanese writer living in Spain. In his book, written in Japanese, "The Anatomy of the WTC Collapses: Flaws in the U.S. Government's Account," he uses photos, drawings and blueprints of the WTC buildings to back up his claim that buildings one and two could not have fallen in the manner they fell due to the plane crashes and subsequent fires. "And even if it was conceivable that they could fall due to the damage that day," Dojimaru wrote in an e-mail, "they never would have collapsed horizontally, and would have scattered steel beams and smashed concrete much farther than 100 meters."For Fujita, it was Dojimaru's meticulous research, combined with the aforementioned Web sites, that convinced him the official story was nothing more than a house of cards.One book that Fujita found unconvincing was the "9/11 Commission Report.""The head of the 9/11 Commission is close with (U.S. Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice and (Vice President Dick) Cheney. One commission member (Sen. Max Cleland) resigned, saying the White House did not disclose enough information."On Democracy Now's radio show in March 2004, Cleland even went as far as to say, "This White House wants to cover it (the facts of 9/11) up."More recently, a New York Times article in January quoted Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, as saying that "the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives," and concluded that that "obstructed our investigation."Following the lead of Fujita, Karen Johnson, a conservative Republican senator from Arizona, has publicly voiced her doubts about 9/11 before the U.S. Senate. Inspired by Blair Gadsby  who on May 27 started a hunger strike to bring attention to the 911 Truth Movement  Johnson, like Fujita, is encouraging politicians to conduct a thorough, independent investigation.Fujita, who worked for more than 20 years for the international conflict resolution NGO group MRA and the Japanese Association for Aid and Relief (AAR), has become something of a global cause celebre since his extraordinary questioning at the Diet. In February 2008, he participated in a conference at the European Parliament led by EMP Guilietto Chiesa calling for an independent commission of inquiry into 9/11. While in Europe, he met with NGOs from 11 European countries to discuss 9/11.One month later Fujita spoke at the "Truth Now" conference in Sydney, Australia. One focus of these meetings was the Italian documentary "ZERO," whose release will mark the first time the 9/11 movement's message has moved from the "cyberworld" to public venues. Fujita has also spoken about his 9/11 doubts on two U.S. radio shows, one hosted by Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and another by Alex Jones of infowars.com.He is also making ripples in Japan. Fujita was featured in a March 2 article by well-known critic Takao Iwami on "How to deal with doubts about 9/11" in the Sunday Mainichi weekly. He was also featured in a March 26 Spa! magazine piece headlined, "European conference discusses 9/11 doubts."However, not everyone is enthralled with Fujita's bold line of questioning."One person showed strong anger towards me," Fujita noted, "and another (Japanese person) threatened my life. A few others advised me to be extremely careful."Still, Fujita says, the vast majority  around 95 percent  have been positive."One man said, 'You're a true samurai.' Another man came all the way from Okayama in western Japan to thank me personally. And among other Parliament members, I received only words of encouragement and support."While in Europe, Fujita met British former MP Meacher, who dared to question the official story when it was still considered gospel. Time, the Iraq war and well-sourced online videos are emboldening many people, including politicians, to step out of the cyberworld and voice their doubts in newspapers, magazines, theaters, and  most importantly  government chambers."Now Blair is gone, and Bush will soon be gone," Meacher told Fujita. "Our time is coming."

Monday, June 23, 2008

The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is the largest reserve of its kind, with 700 million barrels of unrefined crude oil housed in man-made, underground facilities in Texas and Louisiana. That is about as much oil as the entire world consumes in nine days. By 2015, total SPR capacity will have been increased from 730 million to one billion barrels.

There have been numerous calls for the President to sell off some of the SPR reserves in order to mitigate the steep upward movement of crude oil prices. On May 13, 2008, deliveries to the SPR were halted by Congressional action. Since 1975, when it was created, the SPR has made only three major sales of its reserves.

The first sale was authorized during Saddam Husseins occupation of Kuwait and the American invasion that ensued, when 21 million barrels were sold. Distribution, however, began in February 1991, by which time prices had decreased by more than a third from their October 1990 highs. The second instance was in 1996, when President Clinton authorized the sale of 28 million barrels and used the revenue to make up for part of the federal spending deficit. Finally, in September 2005, after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused major damage to refineries and pipelines in the region, the SPR sold 11 million barrels of its reserves, which ensured that the remaining refineries could continue to operate near capacity.

If a sustained sale were implemented, SPR facilities would be capable of supplying up to 4.4 million barrels of oil per day -- about half the daily production of Saudi Arabia (the worlds largest producer) and more than that of Iran (the fourth largest).

An additional supply of 4.4 million barrels per day could be sustained for 90 days, decreasing thereafter as the facilities emptied and less could be pumped. This would increase the global supply of crude oil by 5.5 percent. If it were sold exclusively to domestic buyers, would reduce imports by one third. If the focus were mainly on replacing OPEC imports, total imports from OPEC nations would be reduced by 75 percent during this period.

However, the SPR consists entirely of crude oil, which must be refined before it can be used. The rate of U.S. refinery utilization as of May 2, 2008 was 85 percent. Given that total U.S. production is about eight million barrels per day, this implies that there is refining capacity for only another 1.4 million barrels per day. At this pace, the release of refined SPR reserves into the market could be sustained for one and a half years and could replace about 12 percent of total imports.

It is difficult to predict what the short-term effect on oil prices would be if SPR crude were released. All else equal, one could expect prices to drop, though by how much is anyones guess. However, other factors could dampen the effect. For instance, a sudden influx of crude could put pressure on already strained refineries, leading to higher refining costs. Also, oil-producing nations, many already reluctant to increase supply, could be further disinclined to do so.

Though short-term price fluctuations are unpredictable, any sale of SPR crude of significant magnitude cannot be sustained for long, making it unlikely to have any effect on oil prices after the reserve has been exhausted.

American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)http://www.aier.org/

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Molonlabe Email News List molonlabe@hisurfer.netIn God, we have a great and invincible ally!His faithful will be raised on eagle's wings!

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Posted By: RayelanDate: Sunday, 12 November 2006, 4:12 p.m.

HUMANS OF THE WORLD: STOP USING DEPLETED URANIUM TO KILL PEOPLE!!

You cannot Cremate the body as particles would go into the air. You cannot bury the body without sealing in a special bag or the particles will rot and go into the ground water or soil to be sent to water sources WORLDWIDE!

Subject: 300 MILLION BODY BAGS take time to manufacture and ship to any Nation.

Secretary General Kofi Anan:

Soon WE in America will have a change of leadership and the drums of WAR still sound throughout the World without action by the United Nations. My letters to the United Nations BEGGING for permission to appear at our own costs for 10 minutes to allow two senior citizens from the Host Nation to PLEAD TO THE UNITED NATIONS TO STOP DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPON USE has not been even answered via phone, fax or e-mail let alone letter. Again we ask you and the representatives to see:

HTTP://WWW.APFN.ORG/APFN/DU.HTM

Page Translates into 48 languages for those who do not understand English. To make matters worse, our mail out is now returning letters from three permanent representatives of the United Nations so please check each address on your site.

REMEMBER 300 MILLION BODY BAGS TAKE TIME TO MANUFACTURE!

You must have people ALIVE to ship them plus people ALIVE to transport them and make the deliveries! They may also be needed and used for BIRD FLU pandemic which is far less dangerous than DU!

When this Depleted Uranium plague termed "America's Plague of 2006" gets really started in ALL NATIONS no one will be safe.

TWO SENIOR CITIZENS OF THE HOST NATION asked for permission for Ruth D. Bundy and Ralph Charles Whitley, Sr. to be allowed to appear before the United Nations at no cost to YOU nor our government. Time required 10 minutes TOPS to warn each and every representative of the dangers of allowing America and the Allies to keep using Depleted Uranium weapons releasing particles which will contaminate the GLOBE and kill hundreds of Millions of PEOPLE.

Please advise PLUS furnish entire Rep e-mail addresses for Botswana Malawi and Columbia who have been returned as the postal service has been shut down with weekly delays due to new equipment coming on line. We in America worry about Anthrax but IGNORE a killer already spreading the radioactive uranium particles to every man, woman and child in the WAR ZONES plus going home to unsuspecting humans in every Nation. GOD HELP US IF YOU AT THE UN IGNORE THIS PROBLEM AND YOUR SOLEMN DUTY TO STOP THIS NATION FROM KILLING INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN ON THIS PLANET!

Animals, Insects and even fish or fowl may adapt to DU particle contamination. It is the HUMAN who will die in record numbers and some fools will cremate large groups of bodies releasing the particles to others! Think about that when you return to your family and Nation Mr. Secretary General!

BTW: Found several companies who supply BODY BAGS for anyone who dies from Depleted Uranium particles. Remember you cannot Cremate the body as particles would go into the air. You cannot bury the body without sealing in a special bag or the particles will rot and go into the ground water or soil to be sent to water sources WORLDWIDE!

Remember:

Do not worry about BIRD FLU... Worry about Depleted Uranium particles and the usage is growing as well as the contamination. America's Plague of 2006 will kill an estimated 300 Million PLUS humans on this planet.

The death of tens of millions of animals, fish, fowl, insects and even water and air sources can be prevented by the United Nations BANNING the use of Depleted Uranium Weapons WORLDWIDE and ordering all of the U.S. And Allied forces to locate contaminated areas, clean or encapsulate war machines destroyed and still contaminating the air and ground plus any human who comes into contact PLUS make each clean up the unexploded weapons with depleted uranium lying around so children can find them and take them home.

Is your legacy and that of the current membership to be DENIAL OF TWO HOST NATION SENIOR CITIZENS OF A RIGHT TO APPEAR TO BEG FOR STOPPING DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPON USE WHICH IS CONTAMINATING THE PLANET?

What will you do or where will you GO if your dosimeter shows contamination? And your family and Nation? All because the United Nations membership believe they may not call upon the American HOST NATION and allies to STOP USING A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION! All because the females cannot control the male URGE for WAR!

A former friend from the 40's Mr. Louis A. Johnson, former Secretary of Defense for the United States under U.S. President Harry S. Truman once told me that the TRUTH WILL PREVAIL!

Does a plush living and gushing respect from all those in the United Nations TRUMP A SOLEMN DUTY TO PROTECT ALL PEOPLES AND NATIONS?

Ralph Charles Whitley, Sr. can be provided with enough medicines to make a trip anywhere in the world for up to 3 months without refill to confirm Depleted Uranium radiation and Dr. Douge Rokke and Dr. Lauren Moret have the solution to the WORLD problems of Depleted Uranium exposure and both Ruth and myself are ready to fly to New York OVERNIGHT in order to appear if allowed. The choice remains with the UN! I would WELCOME the Secretary General to any group sanctioned by the UN to use radiac geiger counters and other GPS equipment to make these reports.... remember... those who volunteer will no doubt DIE FROM EXPOSURE Mr. Kofi Anan and if you are not ready to make the ultimate sacrifice of YOUR LIFE please do not volunteer for such a mission.

I have six RADTriage dosimeters coming to my home to use HERE or overseas! Each person in every Nation should be issued one but we both know that will not happen. Do YOU have one for all delegation representatives? We do not even have them for our brave military and civilian personnel who will not know of the contamination until DEATH! Tell you anything about the leadership in America?

Veteran's KNOW the TRUTH!

Veteran's will volunteer to save the lives of this PLANET going into any area under UN control and sanction or protection to obtain readings and use GPS to locate HOT ZONES which can be cleaned up and marked with the RADIATION SYMBOL to keep others away. Ruth will stay home and keep herself safe feeding our feline children and praying! What will YOU do?

WILL YOU HELP?

Those WEAPONS are not in the hands of the reported Terrorists YET and when they get them NO MAN, WOMAN, CHILD, BUILDING, WAR MACHINE IS SAFE!

America brought the World two WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION which are Nuclear - The ATOMIC BOMB AND DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS! THE UN OUTLAWED NUCLEAR WEAPONS LIKE THE ATOMIC BOMB AND AMERICA GOT THE UPPER HAND DEVELOPING DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS TO USE AGAINST THE SUSPECTED TERRORISTS, MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN, ANIMALS, FOWL, INSECTS, AIR AND WATER PLUS SOIL!

MAKE AN AMERICAN PROUD??? N O T this Veteran or his partner in life!

PLEASE GO TO

HTTP://WWW.APFN.ORG/APFN/DU.HTM

THE TRUTH IS JUST IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES BUT NOT IN THE MEDIA OR PAPERS!

*COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107,any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair usewithout profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interestin receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ]

To those who have taken the Oath, Remember the Oath!To those who have not and believe in the Constitution,Take a similar Oath now to the Constitution!Remember that those who make laws contrary to the Constitution,Those who enforce laws contrary to the Constitution,And those who give orders contrary to the Constitution,Have become domestic enemies of the Constitution!It doesn't take a Judge or a lawyer to know the difference!

"I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR (OR AFFIRM) THAT I WILL SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC; THAT I WILL BEAR TRUE FAITH AND ALLEGIANCE TO THE SAME; AND THAT I WILL OBEY THE (CONSTITUTIONAL AND LAWFUL) ORDERS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE (CONSTITUTIONAL AND LAWFUL) ORDERS OF THE OFFICERS APPOINTED OVER ME, ACCORDING TO REGULATIONS AND THE UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE. SO HELP ME GOD."All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void." Marbury vs. Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 164, 176. (1803)

"Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them." Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 491.

"An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton vs. Shelby County, 118 US 425, 442.

Teddy's Answer to Diversity!

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities. Theodore Roosevelt, speech before the Knights of Columbus, 1915, New York

Teddy's Answer to Bush!

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy's Answer to Bush & Congress

"We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity."  Theodore Roosevelt

With all the specter of violence around us, the foremost question of our time seems to be: how can terrorism be defeated? This billion dollar question however cannot be answered without understanding the rather complex dynamics of terrorism, its meaning to various groups, peoples and state authorities, its modi operandi, means or tools and its contributing factors.

In our earlier discussion, we have established that, as a technique of warfare, terrorism is used by specific people, group or state generally for understandable political purposes. Thus behind almost every terrorist act lurks a political problem. Terrorism purposely relies on brutal strikes against its enemies - objects of hatred, which may include civilians, government officials, symbolic persons or physical objects - to achieve a political effect. Sometimes their ruthless activity starts the vicious cycle of violence and more violence (attacks and counter-attacks) that help them to gain increasing support and even legitimacy of their act.

To Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94), one of the best known Jacobin figures of the French Revolution who promoted the Reign of Terror, "Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country. The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny"

To Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76) and Sergey Nechayev (1847-82), terrorism's two of the earliest ideological proponents, both nihilists - the purpose of revolutionary terror is not to gain a support of masses but, to the contrary, inflict misery and fear on the common population. Karl Heinzen (18091880) claimed that not only the assassinations of leaders, but even the mass murders of innocent civilians, could be effective political tools and should be used without regret. To them, those committing such acts of terror were not terrorists but revolutionaries. To adapt Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), terrorism is the continuation of politics by other means.

Terrorists, whether or not they are affiliated with state authorities, usually have a political strategy. And their vision stretches over years if not decades. Accordingly, coping with terrorism requires a well thought-out plan not only to disarm terrorists but also to identify and then to address the political impulses that underlie their actions.

Modi Operandi of Terrorism

While state authorities routinely use their planes and drones to drop bombs and fire missiles (often touted as "precision guided weapons"  LGBs and PGMs) on civilian targets, in the name of exterminating terrorists, nowadays car bombing has become too common a tactic of warfare that is employed by most terrorists. This is now dubbed, with much justification, as poor man's air force. Interestingly, this tool has been used by many spy organizations - e.g., Israel's Mossad, America's CIA and Russia's KGB/FSB - to hit at their enemies since at least the early 1950s. Sometimes this has been used as a tactic by government agencies to start gang warfare between rival groups. The Italian authorities used this tactic rather successfully to weaken the Mafia.

Car bombing was a common tool employed by anarchists and can be traced back to at least 1920 when Mario Buda exploded his parked horse-drawn wagon near the corner of Wall and Broad streets, directly across from J P Morgan Company. While the intended target Mr. J.P. Morgan was unhurt since he was nowhere close to the blast site, it killed 40 and injured nearly 200 people. It showed how a poor Italian immigrant with some stolen dynamite, a pile of scrap metal, and an old horse could manage to bring unprecedented terror to the inner sanctum of American capitalism.

Buda's wagon, the prototype of today's car bomb, was not imitated until January 12, 1947 when the Jewish terrorist group - Stern Gang - drove a truckload of explosives into a British police station in Haifa, Palestine, killing 4 and injuring 140. The Stern Gang (Lehi) would soon use truck and car bombs to kill Palestinians as well. As Mike Davis has shown vehicle bombs thereafter were used sporadically -- producing notable massacres in Saigon (1952) by the CIA, Algiers (1962) by the French OAS against Algerian civilians and Palermo, Sicily (1963) as part of rivalry between Mafia gangs to continue until the mid-1990s. According to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, the CIA itself was involved in failed attempt to kill Lebanese Shiite leader Fadlallah in 1985 by car bombing. Israeli Mossad has repeatedly used car bombs to kill Arab and Palestinian leaders.

To coin Mike Davis, the "gates of hell" were only truly opened in 1972, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) accidentally improvised the first ammonium nitrate-fuel oil (ANFO) car bomb. Since that improvisation car bomb suddenly became a semi-strategic weapon that, under certain circumstances, was comparable to airpower in its ability to knock out enemy positions. The technique was employed successfully using trucks in Lebanon in 1983 against the French and US Embassies and the US marine barracks; City of London in April 1993 by the IRA; Oklahoma City in 1995 by Tim McVeigh; Khobar Towers, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1996; Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam against the US embassies in 1998; and unsuccessfully in 1993 to knockdown the WTC. Both Ramzy Yousef, the plotter for the 1993 WTC attempt, and his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, were reportedly trained by the CIA on the use of explosives against the Russians. Little did the CIA realize that yesterday's comrade-in-arms could become today's arch-enemy!

Then came September 11, 2001 when fully-loaded planes were used to knockdown the WTC. This was like the ultimate of what Buda's 1920 innovation could do.

Between 2004 and 2005 some 1293 car bombs exploded in Iraq, making it the most dangerous place on earth. While Zarqawi's terrorist group was responsible for most of those blasts, he was not the first one to try car bombing in Iraq. That credit goes to Dr. Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, which planted bombs in the early 1990s under the CIA directives.

The Iraq War also saw the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which were first used against the German forces during WW II, and more recently by the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. The IEDs have been responsible for at least 40% of coalition deaths in Iraq since 2003.

Outside the use of vehicles to transport and explode bombs, the old method of planting bombs and dynamites to blow off enemy's target is also used whenever suitable. There are strong evidences that the Mossad and the CIA were behind the bomb blast on Feb. 22, 2006 in the Shiite "Golden Mosque" in Samarra that sparked off the sectarian violence in Iraq.

While in recent years, radiological dispersal devices (RDDs), more commonly referred to as the dirty bombs, have been touted by the US government as the next lethal arsenal with the terrorists, so far we have not seen its use, and may not do so unless a blowback phenomenon happens. It is believed by many analysts that the Attorney General's office was stoking public fear to justify detainment of Jose Padilla without any criminal charges being formally made against him since March of 2002.

These days there is an unholy campaign to sanction, let alone overlook, barbarism of strategic or so-called precision bombing and shelling that kills civilians indiscriminately that are perpetrated by some states while crying foul about victims killed in car or truck bombings by others. Both activities are criminal and should be condemned.

Factors Contributing to Terrorism

Terrorism has been motivated by a plethora of factors from street and state gangsterism to social, economic, political, ethnic and religious. Of these, overt state terrorism is the worst kind since the state authority practicing it not only believes in its cause but also has the wherewithal at its disposal to continue the process. This form of terrorism, when practiced internally, is often tolerated by other states, who consider such violent activities as internal matters of the perpetrating state. Naturally, this form of terrorism is most difficult to eradicate. Suffice it to say that the theater of overt state terrorism is not necessarily limited to the territory of the state, and can be extra-territorial.

Some examples of overt state terrorism can be found in practices of: (1) repressive regimes against their own people (e.g., the Myanmar regime); (2) racist, bigoted and xenophobic regimes against the 'other' people  who could be either majority or minority group (e.g., Israeli regime against the Palestinian people, Apartheid South Africa against the indigenous Black majority, Myanmar regime against minority Rohingyas and Karens, Soviet/Russian regime against Chechen and Tatar Muslims, Yugoslav/Serbian regime against Muslims in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and Chinese regime against Uighur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists); (3) occupation forces (e.g., American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia; Japanese occupation during WW II in China and Malaysia, Indian occupation of Kashmir, and many colonial governments); and (4) hegemonic powers, e.g., US Navy's shooting down of an Iranian jetliner in the Persian Gulf that killed hundreds of civilian passengers during the Iran-Iraq war, and destruction of Sudan's only pharmaceutical lab during the Clinton era.

Covert state terrorism can happen through spy organizations and surrogates or proxies (who are harbored, trained, financed and underwritten) to further the cause of the sponsor. Examples include: CIA's overthrow of Iran's Musaddeq regime to bring the Shah to power; terrorism of the settler Jews in Israel against the Palestinian people; terrorism of Karen Buddhist Army against Karen Muslims and Christians in the Karen state of Burma; Rakhine terrorism against the Rohingyas of Arakan state of Burma; NATO-led Gladio stay behind network (a secret right wing effort to prevent left wing forces from taking power in Europe) that sometimes staged false-flag bombings and assassinations blamed on left-wing groups to discredit them; Israeli sponsorship of now-abolished Southern Lebanese Army and the Phalange in Lebanon; and American underwriting of the 2008 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia -- that terrorized the citizens.

Generally speaking, terrorism derived from social grievances, even if ideologically reinforced by a dogma such as radical Marxism, tends to fade if the societies in question fail to support the terrorists' cause. This explains why in Latin America various "social revolutionaries" have miserably failed to bring about the desired changes that had hoped for. Violence becomes not just the means to an end but also their raison detre.

However, terrorism rooted in ethnic, national, or religious resentment is the most enduring and the least susceptible to simple eradication. Even when such factors contributing to terrorism are removed, past grievance, resentment, hatred and bitterness can become a rallying ground for committing violence against the other group(s). As has been noticed from the Armenian terrorism directed against the Turks in the 20th century, it takes decades, if not, generations to eradicate the group instinct for terrorism rooted in ethnic, national and religious factors.

The perpetrators of terrorism may or may not be affiliated with an established government. But when it does, it is the worst form of terrorism to cope with. State authority may use opportunities prevalent at the time to unleash its brand of terrorism against its victims. Thus, on September 12, 2001, taking advantage of the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, the Israeli military stormed a West Bank village in pursuit of three alleged Islamic Jihad activists, firing missiles and shells on the building where they had barricaded themselves. In the three-hour exchange of fire, five Palestinian civilians were killedamong them a 12-year-old girland 50 wounded. The next day, Israeli tanks roared into West Bank towns again, setting off gun battles that left three Palestinians dead and 21 wounded. The incursions, the Israeli military said, were intended to "root out terror." But as Prof. Rashid Khalidi has shown Israel's military strategy simply has not worked: Striking civilian centers in which guerrilla actions may be hatched only tightens the spiral of vengeance. Israel's own military coordinator for the West Bank and Gaza, General Amos Gilad, said that Israel's repression of Palestinians in the occupied territories produces "a fool's cycle of violence in which Hamas grows stronger, we respond, and as a result the hardship in the territories grows and Hamas grows even stronger. If the situation continues, we are likely to be confronted with . . . five terror attacks a day."

Within days of 9/11, Sharon's deputy said, "We are operating in the Jenin area and nobody's complaining." In addition to Jenin, the population centers of Jericho, Gaza, Ramallah, and Qalqiliya all came under sustained attack from Israeli forces.

Israel was not alone in the wake of 9/11 to have exploited America's war on terror to terrorize minorities. Russia, China, India, Philippines, Thailand and Burma seized the moment, as did many other governments to bring their brand of state terrorism which hitherto they did not dare to use for fear of international reaction.

The collective sense of hopelessness, discrimination, loss, persecution, harassment and dehumanization of a community by an offending state authority may contribute to terrorism that is directed not only against the sources of such deprivation, but also against the civilian population belonging to the powerful ruling group. Many of the rebel movements, e.g., the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the various Palestinian resistance groups in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, against the established authorities have sometimes succumbed to group identification for victimizing civilians.

As is well known from the IRA experience, harsh torture tactics of interrogation usually backfire and help to recruit more terrorists. The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prison tortures have similarly recruited more terrorists in Iraq than ever before.

Regardless of the gravity of the crime, the perpetrators are fanatical about the very correctness of their cause. They are naturally willing to be hanged or shot dead for standing up to their cause.

In this regard, the example of Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the Hindu terrorist, affiliated with the Hindu Maha Sabha, who killed Mahatma Gandhi is quite revealing. He justified his action in his 150 points statement presented to the jury wherein he accused Gandhi as having proved to be the Father of Pakistan instead of the Father of the Hindu nation  an epithet of high reverence. "The Father of the nation" forgot his paternal duty, he said in his statement. He further said, "If devotion to one's country amounts to a sin, I admit I have committed that sin. If it is meritorious, I humbly claim the merit thereof. I fully and confidently believe that if there be any other court of justice beyond the one founded by the mortals, my act will not be taken as unjust. If after the death there be no such place to reach or to go, there is nothing to be said. I have resorted to the action I did purely for the benefit of the humanity. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought wreck and ruin and destruction to lakhs of Hindus."

An interview of Ariel Sharon, who commanded the Israeli commando Unit 101 that targeted civilian Arabs, is equally informative to understand the mind of a terrorist leader. In the Qibya massacre of 1953, 69 Palestinian civilians, some of them children, were killed by Sharon's troops. In the documentary Israel and the Arabs: 50 Year War, Sharon recalls what happened after the raid: "I was summoned to see Ben-Gurion. It was the first time I met him, and right from the start Ben-Gurion said to me: "Let me first tell you one thing: it doesn't matter what the world says about Israel, it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive."" If this be the attitude of dovish Ben-Gurion, just imagine those of the Jewish hawks that guided Israeli history ever since!

With such a twisted logic, Israel has been able to justify her immoral occupation and sadistic aggression against the Palestinian people. Her heavy handedness has resulted in a disproportionate amount of casualty figures on the Arab side: at least 25 killed for every Israeli killed by a Palestinian gunman or suicide bomber (since the birth of the Jewish state).

Unfathomed hatred and jealousy can also lead to terrorizing the 'other' people. In this regard, the statement of Rabbi David Batzri, head of the Magen David Yeshiva in Jerusalem, is quite revealing. He said, "The nation of Israel is pure and the Arabs are a nation of donkeys. They are an evil disaster, an evil devil, and a nasty affliction. The Arabs are donkeys and beasts. They want to take our girls. They are endowed with true filthiness. There is pure and there is impure and they are impure." [Haaretz, March 21, 2006] With such a hateful mindset it becomes so kosher to practice the worst form of terrorism against the foe, something that we have also witnessed before in Hitler's Germany. Not surprisingly, a case by case analysis would show that terrorism of Hamas and Hizballah pales in comparison to those practiced by the Jewish state.

As can be seen from the above brief discussion, the dynamics of terrorism can be rather complex, requiring detailed analysis on a case by case basis to understand its various modes of operations and factors contributing to this problem.

Friday, June 20, 2008

A study by French researchers has found that using insecticides -- either in the home or garden -- increases the risk of childhood leukemia.

Your child's risk of harm from pesticide exposure is highest while you're pregnant and in the early years of his or her life.

The study, published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, included 280 children who had been newly diagnosed with acute leukemia and another 288 children without the disease. After interviewing each child's mother it was found that:

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Children exposed to home insecticides while in the womb or after birth had almost twice the risk of acute leukemia as those who were not. *

Children exposed to garden insecticides and fungicides had double the risk of acute childhood leukemia. *

Children who had been exposed to insecticidal shampoos to treat head lice had almost double the risk.

A 2002 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found similar findings. Along with noting that children exposed to professional pest control from one year before birth to three years after birth had a significantly increased risk of leukemia, the study found that:

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Insecticide exposure early in life appears to be worse for the child than exposure later in life. *

The highest risk came from exposure during pregnancy. *

The more frequent the exposure, the higher the risk.

Pesticides Increase Risk of Non-Hodkin Lymphoma

Yet another study, published in the journal Cancer, found that children exposed (either in utero or after birth) to household insecticides or professional extermination chemicals within the home were three to seven times more likely to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma than children not exposed.

The risk of one type of lymphome, lymphoblastic lymphoma, increased by 12.5 times after exposure to household pesticides.

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"A limited number of these compounds may be capable of inducing lymphoma, particularly when used around the home," said chief researcher Jonathan D. Buckley, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., from the Department of Preventative Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Children Especially at Risk from Insecticides

Exposure to pesticides, says Dr. Donald Mattison, of the March of Dimes, can cause many short- and long-term problems, including:

"Children are more vulnerable to the effects of pesticide exposure because their internal organs are still developing and maturing," said Dr. Mattison.

Further, because they play on the floor or lawn and put objects into their mouths, they may be exposed to increased amounts.

And the List Goes On

Avoid using dangerous pesticides for aesthetic purposes like dandelions in your lawn -- the health risks are not worth it!

The potential health effects of pesticide exposure do not end yet. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences and the Environmental Working Group have found that children exposed to carcinogenic pesticides are at a high risk of future cancer. And animal and human studies of individual pesticides have also uncovered the following risks:

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Fertility problems *

Brain tumors *

Birth defects *

Irritation to skin and eyes *

Hormone or endocrine system problems

Protecting Your Child and Family From Dangerous Insecticides

While it would be difficult to reduce your child's pesticide exposure to an absolute zero, you can significantly reduce it. One of the most important things to be aware of is to avoid using conventional lice treatments on your child.

"Preparations like Rid and Kwell ... are definitely toxic to people," says Dr. Andrew Weil, MD. That's because they contain pediculicides, which are potent pesticides and insecticides designed to poison lice, but that can be absorbed directly into your child's scalp.

Flea and tick control products can be extremely hazardous, some containing highly noxious nerve gas. Still, these products have approval to be sold because the claim is that the amount of such hazards is minimal in the products. Flea collars and tags are literally soaked in chemical pesticides, emitting a continuous toxic cloud into the air, not only for your pet, but for you and your family.

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If your child does come home with a case of head lice, we recommend you use Lice B Gone, a safe, non-toxic, 100 percent pesticide-free multi-enzyme shampoo made from natural plant sources. This extra-strength formula has been clinically proven to effectively remove lice and nits without harmful pesticides or irritating chemicals.

Along with avoiding conventional lice treatments, we also recommend using the following strategies:

The LaRouche Political Action Committee has now released a 24-page pamphlet, called "Your Enemy, George Soros," which is already being mass circulated throughout the United States and internationally, to the purpose of destroying George Soros within the next six weeks -- well before the Democratic Convention in Denver in late August. Soros has functioned as the hit-man for the British financial oligarcy in taking over the Democratic Party, and is running the scam which is intent on making Barack Obama the Democratic presidential candidate, while attempting to drive Hillary Clinton out of the race, despite her winning the majority of the popular vote in the primaries, and despite the fact that she is the only candidate certain to win in November. The candidate is NOT yet chosen, and will not be until the convention. Destroying the British controller George Soros is the necessary first step in saving the Democratic Party, the country and the world economy.

Back during Presidential campaign year 2004, my associates and I were calling attention to an important book on the subject of "The Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man." That man had a conscience. In the following report, LPAC is featuring a much bigger story, on the subject of George Soros as a political-economic hit-man. The George Soros we present in this report, has no conscience about what he has done, or what he does. This a report written, in large part, by Soros' own mouth.

George Soros is not a top-ranking financier, he is like the mafia thug, without a real conscience, like a thug sent to kill a friend of yours, by only a hit-man for the really big financial interests, hired out to rob your friends, and you, of about everything, including their nation, and your personal freedom.

George Soros does not actually own Senator Barack Obama; some other people do; but, Soros is a key controller, and seemingly the virtual owner of both Democratic Party Chairman Howard "Scream" Dean, that Party, perhaps your political party, and, in fact, your nation, which are both what political-economic hit-man George Soros is aiming to destroy.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

The banking system is finished. It will collapse if the central banks continue trying to bail out the worthless speculative paper by pumping in trillions of dollars, through hyperinflation, as we see already in fuel, food and commodities. But it will also collapse if they stop the bailout, since most of the banks' assets are indeed worthless. Only bankruptcy reorganization can stop the bank collapse from bringing down the real economy.This article is in the current EIR -- Mike Billington

This article appears in the June 20, 2008 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

by John Hoefle

When the banking crisis broke out into the open last year, and the central banks embarked on a regime of liquidity pumping, collateral sucking, and bailouts, Lyndon LaRouche warned that this would inevitably lead to hyperinflation, and that it must be stopped, immediately. Yet, the bankers kept going, insisting that the problem could be contained with quick action, even as the "subprime crisis" grew into a "credit crisis," and finally revealed itself as what it had been all along, a full-fledged systemic financial crisis centered in the big banks.

Since last year, the major central banks of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, led by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB), have issued some $3.5 trillion in loans to the banking system, much of that in exchange for "illiquid" collateral—illiquid being a polite way of saying worthless. This debt-recycling scheme has, at least temporarily, taken some of the huge quantities of worthless paper off the banks' books, making the banks look a little less bankrupt; but the bailout program has, as LaRouche warned, been an unmitigated disaster, spreading hyperinflation from the financial markets into the prices of everyday essentials such as food and oil, raising the cost of nearly everything our households need to survive.

Without this extraordinary bailout operation, the financial system would cease to exist. The banks would have to close their doors, and quadrillions of dollars of fictitious assets and derivatives bets would have to be written off, wiping out all the so-called profits of the past four decades, revealing the post-industrial financial boom for what it was: a fraud. As true as it is, it is not a conclusion the bankers are willing to accept voluntarily.

However, the soaring prices of food and gas create a whole different set of problems for our economy, and a different set of problems for the banks. Our economy, we have been repeatedly told, is driven by consumer spending, but the more consumers are forced to spend for food and gasoline and other essentials, the less they have to purchase other goods, like new cars, furniture, electronic gadgets, movies, and the like. It also means they have less left over to service their credit card and other debts. The corporations which make, import, and sell these goods and services are hit with a combination of increased costs as the prices they pay rise, and decreased profits as their sales fall. The receding tide of economic activity lowers all boats.

Furthermore, the nation is overloaded with debt—personal debt, household debt, corporate debt, and financial sector debt—which, as a whole, cannot be paid. We have dealt with this in the past by rolling it over, issuing new debt to pay off the old, with the total growing all the while. The banks made room for the new debt by selling the old into the asset-backed and "structured finance" securities markets, where these sows' ears were seemingly turned into silk purses. These markets have since virtually shut down, and with them the mechanism for rolling over the debt. As a result, the debt crisis is again taking center stage.

The central banks are thus faced with a dilemma: If they stop the bailouts, the whole house of cards will come tumbling down; but if they keep the bailout going, the hyperinflation will blow out the financial system, the dollar, governments, households, and what's left of the economy.

They are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.Faction Fights

This is what is behind all the discussions of interest rate hikes at the ECB and the Fed, and the recent statements by central banker emeriti like Paul Volcker. The realization is growing among many in the financial community that the bailout policy is a disaster, and that the liquidity pumping must be constrained. This is a form of financial triage, in which parts of the system are left to die in the hope of saving the system itself. Naturally, those being left to die are opposed to the plan, and the whole issue of which parts will be left to die is fraught with contention. When it comes to sacrificial lambs, there are no volunteers.

Volcker, the former Fed chairman, who now chairs the Group of 30 "wise men" organization of senior financial figures (the Bank of England's Mervyn King and the ECB's Jean Claude Trichet are also members), told the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal on June 9, that the current financial system has failed the test of the marketplace.

"I suspect the apparent need for intensive and broad reform will be reinforced in the coming months by further financial pressures, pressures likely to arise from the slowing U.S. economy and the possibility of recessionary tendencies," Volcker said, calling on the Fed to exercise "disciplined monetary management" to keep inflation under control. Volcker called the turmoil of the past year a "clarion call," which exposed weaknesses in the regulation of the derivatives markets and non-bank financial institutions.

LaRouche characterized Volcker's comments as useful and valid warnings, but insufficient. If Volcker wants to be taken seriously, LaRouche said, he must come to grips with his own role in setting the financial bubble into motion, and admit his own mistakes. This is a time for honesty, not passing the buck.

New York Fed CEO Timothy Geithner, addressing the Economic Club of New York on the same day as Volcker's speech, opened with a discussion of the "fragile" condition of the financial system, and though he, like Volcker, spoke in sanitized terms, his audience well understood the gravity of the situation. He described the rise and fall of the securities markets, noting that when they collapsed, "banks could not fully absorb and offset the effects of the pullback in investor participation—or the 'run'—on this non-bank system, in part because they themselves had sponsored many of these off-balance-sheet vehicles.... Banks lost the capacity to move riskier assets off their balance sheets."

While Geithner's descriptions call to mind the way in which the proverbial boy on trial for murdering his parents asked for sympathy because he was now an orphan, the crisis to which he alluded is real and, as he admits, must be resolved. However, he rules out the only real solution—putting the system through bankruptcy—by insisting we "first repair, then reform" the system.

"Our first and most immediate priority remains to help the economy and the financial system get through this crisis," Geithner said.Two Tiers

The problem with that approach is that saving the economy requires putting the financial system down, and taking the money we are currently throwing down the bailout rathole and spending it on rebuilding the nation's productivity. Remove the parasite first, then heal the host.

To do this will require a huge dose of low-interest-rate government credit to fund large-scale development projects like nuclear power plants, high-speed maglev trains, water projects like NAWAPA (North American Water and Power Alliance), in addition to rebuilding our roads and bridges, water and sewer systems, schools, and such. We must also launch, as a top national priority, the development of nuclear fusion as a power source, and the development of technologies to allow us to use hydrogen as a fuel. This must be done on an emergency basis, both to rebuild our standard of living and reduce our dependence upon the oligarchic raw materials cartels, beginning with oil. We can, and must, think our way out of this crisis.

What is needed, as LaRouche has said, is a two-tiered credit system, in which credit is made available for such projects at very low interest rates—one to two percent—while charging higher rates for other purposes. Money, even in large quantities, issued for these productive projects is not inflationary, since the increases in productivity, and resultant economic growth, these projects would generate would cover the costs many times over.Our Only Hope

LaRouche's three-point plan is our only hope at this late hour. That plan begins with the passage of the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA) to put up firewalls to protect the citizenry, while the financial system is put through bankruptcy, which is a prerequisite for point two—the introduction of the two-tiered credit system. Then, having corrected our own mistakes, we can begin working with other nations—Russia, China, India, and others—to rebuild the world under American System principles, as we did in the beginning, and again, in the post-Civil War era. We must abandon the British imperial methods we have adopted in recent decades, and return to the most powerful economic system the world has ever seen: the American System.

The great irony here, is that the attempt to save the current, Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, to preserve the fictitious riches some among us have amassed, is what dooms us, while letting the fiction go and returning to the American System would open the door to prosperity for all. Faced with more heads than hats, the oligarchs choose to lop off heads, but it were far more humane and productive that we simply make more hats.

We should be considerably more concerned about the fate of humanity, the fate of our children, and the children of the world, than we are about the fate of a few rapacious banks and cartels, and the preservation of oligarchic power. It is time to let the illusions go, roll up our sleeves, and get to work.

About Me

ROLAND SAN JUAN was a researcher, management consultant, inventor, a part time radio broadcaster and a publishing director. He died last November 25, 2008 after suffering a stroke. His staff will continue his unfinished work to inform the world of the untold truths. Please read Erick San Juan's articles at: ericksanjuan.blogspot.com This blog is dedicated to the late Max Soliven, a FILIPINO PATRIOT.
DISCLAIMER - We do not own or claim any rights to the articles presented in this blog. They are for information and reference only for whatever it's worth. They are copyrighted to their rightful owners.
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